July Windfalls and Then Some

Freezer replaced. Waiting delivery. Temporary tooth in. Waiting permanent. And surprise, neither cost as much as expected. A tiny windfall.

The hardest part was losing the prepared meals, but I have a turkey thawing out in the fridge…so Thanksgiving in July. And broccoli growing. Turkey Divan.

If you’ve been reading my blog for some time, you’ll remember my basement flooding a year ago January. My husband has wanted to send a camera down our house pipes (kind of a house colonoscopy) ever since to see if my beautiful and ‘sentimental’ (When we first moved into the house, my grandfather lamented the lack of trees in my neighborhood. When he died, he bequeathed each of the grandkids $100 from his estate. I spent my money on trees: two walnut, four birches and one Sycamore. With one thing and another only the walnut trees remain) trees were causing blockages. We’ve argued over taking them out since the basement flooded. Well, they’ve been vindicated. No blockage, but…there is always a but, isn’t there? The pipes have joint damage. We need them relined. The tiny windfall gone.

I did enjoy finishing Best Friends Forever by Jennifer Weiner in the shade of my beloved trees this afternoon though. A wonderful novel. A ton of wit and charm and truth. Loved it.

And finally, July Windfalls:
· Fourth of July parades and BBQs
· Time to read…finally
· Delphiniums blooming next to my windmill
· The sound and smell of Rainbirds® hitting hot pavement
· Afternoons naps
· Working on my novel on the patio on my laptop
· Yard sales
· Little girls in sundress (Oh, how I wish I could still wear them)
· Yellow Swallowtail butterflies on my daisies
· A handheld paddle fan and the memories it evokes (grandma sitting on a church bench in the airless meeting hall, her rhinestones glittering rainbows on the ceiling, and knowing she had five flavor Lifesavors© in her purse. I’d get them if I were good.)

Shotgun

It sits in the corner of my office, a relic. A Damascus twist double barrel glinting gunmetal old, the stock, hand-worn walnut filled and repaired. The etchings on the frame and hammer rubbed away in places speak of use and whisper history and stories I long to hear.

I’ve lusted after double-barrel shotguns at every antique fair I’ve ever gone to. I’ve always wanted one. But this, an early Valentine gift, is more than I’d ever hoped for. It’s not mint condition; rather, it’s charming in its imperfections.

I don’t know how old it is. Can’t find out anything about it on the internet, other than it was likely built before 1899, which is just another reason to love it. I love old things and nothing as much as old western things.

So, what stories could it tell me? What quirks would it have if it were safe to use? Who owned it? What were they like? What story will I grow from this unexpected gift? This seed.

I Can

Often it's not big things that ease the road to getting somewhere, but the little things. Every day I ask myself- What can I do today to improve my chance of writing success?

What I can do:
I can show up.
I can write —every day. Something.
I can learn more.
I can take a class or workshop.
I can do research.
I can work at being healthy.
I can be grateful.
I can go through my files, revise what I have and submit somewhere.
I can start something new.
Rewrite something old.
I can get support. Even if that means doing a blog. Searching the internet.
I can write. One word, then another.
I can hold on to my dream.
I can use prompts and write.
I can do the Handy method every day if necessary. (more on this in a later blog)
I can read.
I can keep trying.
And never give up.

Windfalls(3)

Thirty years ago when the apple trees were heavy with not-quite-yet-ripe apples, my father-in-law would let me gather fallen apples from his orchard to make windfall apple juice. Any apples on the tree were off-limits as they were used strictly for winter eating. (Except, the green Yellow Delicious apples I managed to steal when he wasn’t looking.) (Stolen Apple Pie can’t be made any other way.)

At the time my husband and I were struggling just to make ends meet with three little children, a rough economy and my husband’s unsecure job. A stay-at-home mom, I did whatever I could to help out. I sewed, gardened, clipped coupons and of course, canned everything. No one else wanted to bother with the fallen apples. For me, the windfall apple juice was a gift. A mix of several kinds of apples, the juice was sweet, yet tart. And as an added bonus it turned out a crisp champagne-pink color. The rows of glistening jars tucked along the shelves of my fruit room glinted like pink sapphires. Perfect.

Windfalls…

After the wet, sloopy snow yesterday, break-out sunshine today dripped along the canal ridge above my house like overflowing rain gutters. Incessant. A reminder that spring is just around the corner.

Windfalls…

Glancing over my shoulder on my two -mile walk this morning, I caught a pair of red fox shadowing me and my dog, L.E. I kept walking, certain the two would cross the road and make for cover, but as I reached the end of the trail and turned back, they were still following me and only loped away as I started back toward them.


On the road back, a tree, stark branches limned by sun-melt snow fanned the morning glory blue sky, more charcoal sketch than real.

A windfall…

They’re all around us. Often we dismiss them. We don’t value them. We miss them by not paying attention. As writers we cannot afford this. We need to notice every gift, good or bad, big or small.

My challenge is: pay attention. Make a list. Appreciate and describe the windfalls that make you smile, make you frown, fill you with peace, churn your emotions. Write them down in your journal; take notes describing the things you notice. Take into your mind and heart all these gifts. They are the footprint of your work. They are your first draft.

Truth

Truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it. Ignorance may deride it. But in the end, there it is —Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill

The truth will set you free. Odds are against any one of us. Really, it is. To be noticed. To be accepted. To be published. To make a living writing. And with the economy as it is—well, that chance just got that much harder.

I, for one, have decided it isn’t worth the heartache. I’ve let the dream go. Just let it go. Accepted the truth. Accepted the facts in front of me. Few are chosen. Fewer make money. The economy has gone south, the market tightened. It’s bound to tighten even more. The dream of getting your novel published, your article sold is ever farther away.

Hey, TiGi, what ya doing here? Isn’t this blog supposed to build writers up? Give us hope? Give us inspiration? You’re killing us here.

Wait. Truth does set you free. If the possibility of getting published is ever farther away—Why not write for yourself? For the fun, the enjoyment and the love of writing? Just that. Bring all the joy and freedom you had once back. Stop writing for publication. Stop trying to be accepted by that editor who is looking for what’s selling big. Stop trying to compete with writers like James Patterson or Nora Roberts.

Write just for little old you. Ignore all the ought-to’s and should-have articles, the how-to books telling you how to get published. Just write. What does it matter? Write your book, your story, your article. Write however you want.

Impossible sets you free.

What would you write and how if you weren’t worried about success or getting published? Could you soar? I think, maybe so.

So—let’s.

I think we get so caught up in what we need to do to get published, to get accepted that we lose the very thing we love most about writing. Then, in tiny, small ways our writing becomes stilted and cold. Maybe, we should write to save ourselves, for ourselves. In doing that, I think our writing will be that much better. That much more true and real.

And you know what? They’re going to want that, those publishers looking for the next great thing. That’s the truth.

The Writer and Writer's Digest

I started writing stories in the back seat of an old ’54 gray and white Chevy. Bored more than anything. We didn’t have Game boys, I-pods or cell phones. Heck, I didn’t even have the luxury of paper and pen at first. Only a stub pencil and a piece of cardboard my father tore from a box for me. I can still remember the feel of the rough seatback as I slid down into the seat. The world went away as I wrote.


The story was an adventure about a girl and her horse. Back then it always was. I was completely horse crazy. A dreamer of a girl, with her nose in a book or notebook. A friend of my mom called, fey. I was always pretending, always somewhere else in my mind. Making up adventures, dialogue, characters.


In high school years later, my desire to write became a tentative career move. (Not completely serious because back then, the real goal for girls back then was still to get married. The 60s free love hadn’t quite caught up to my small town.) My father introduced me to The Writer and Writer’s Digest. Once a month I would find a copy of both on my bed. Quiet encouragement. Nudges.


I read them cover to cover. Took every writing class my high school offered, wrote reams of angst-riddled poetry and high school news copy. Then, like every other girl in my class I went looking for my guy.


That was over forty years ago, my father’s been gone most of them. I still read every issue of both magazines, cover to cover. That steady, quiet encouragement has whispered to me all these years. My father, a floundering writer himself, understood my lapses, my day-dreaming, my imagination. My sometimes observing life instead of living it, of not always being completely present. He, too, knew what it was like to try to imprint something that popped into his mind so he didn’t lose it. He understood my eaves-dropping on conversation, my constant questions, my wondering, my compulsion to find out why, how, when, where and who.


He must have known the same desperation when he found himself without pen or paper, the gut-punch of rejection, the quiet desperate theft of that moment in a busy life to write, but I’m not sure he had the quiet encouragement I got from him. That I still get, every month as the magazines come to my mailbox. A little encouragement from heaven.


We all need some. Here’s a nydge for all of you.



Write—Save yourself. Write anyway!

Windfalls

Windfalls…


Unexpected gifts plunked in my lap, landing at my feet, conking me on my head. Windfalls?Blown by chance, design, or circumstance, delivered by friends, family, strangers, or nature.
I’ve had a lifetime of them, as I’m sure you have, too. And t



This year—more than I can count.


Windfalls…


Some, I’ve had to be open for, aware enough to notice and appreciate. Some have been disguised by heartache. Others, I’ve had to look real hard to see. We all receive them. Every day. A helping hand, a smile, a tiny treasure. Gifts, nudges, little hands up.


Windfalls? They’re good to pass along, too. That’s what I’d like to do. Hand windfalls out to those in need; conk someone else in the head, whisper in another’s needy ear, drop one or two into someone’s empty lap.


Someone else like me…


Me?


Well, I’m a struggling writer with more rejections than publications. More projects started than finished. I flounder, but I keep trying.


I’ve been…
A lonely girl in the back seat of a ’54 Chevy Coup writing stories on the back of cardboard boxes to pass the time. An awkward sixth-grader stumbling through puberty, aching to be Louisa May Alcott. A long-haired, hippy-inspired teenager coping with love, school and the death of her father the only way she knew how-by pouring her anguish on paper, for the grief was too big for tears. A new mother with a colicky baby and long sleepless nights to wade through. A mom with a house full of active boys whose husband worked out of town six days a week during another long ago economic ‘downturn.’ An empty nester. A primary care-giver for an elderly cancer-survivor. A fifty-something grandma.


Writing has pulled me up, dragged me through. It’s saved me.